


But Misery's A Little Quicker

by JDylah_da_Kylah



Series: Caught In All, The Stars Are Hiding [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Dreams vs. Reality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship/Love, Illustrated (soon), M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Canon Fix-It, Retrospective, Undecided Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 19:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10974222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JDylah_da_Kylah/pseuds/JDylah_da_Kylah
Summary: There are acts you perform for patients, for friends, and for lovers, and parts accordingly you play. But Julian's discovering, post hoc, that the lines are never really as fine as that, however firmly and comfortably he's convinced himself to draw them.Or: "What would you sacrifice? What are you waiting on?"





	But Misery's A Little Quicker

**Author's Note:**

> After wheedling out [_Are You Lost?_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10884306), I kept feeling this nagging sense that I needed to write something from Julian's POV . . . and, given everything, to work through my own take on his response to Andrew Robinson's _A Stitch in Time_ . . . not to mention, I don't know, the fact that Julian's relationship with Ezri, in conjuncture with the disintegration(ish) of his relationship / friendship / etc. with Garak, continues to confuse me.
> 
> And then, while writing this, my brain ran with Many Thoughts, some of which are here, some of which will be fleshed out elsewhere. 
> 
> Somewhat inspired by Paradise Fears' ["Battle Scars"](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/paradisefears/battlescars.html):
> 
> "This is an anthem for the homesick, for the beaten,  
> The lost, the broke, the defeated.  
> A song for the heartsick, for the standbys,  
> Living life in the shadow of a goodbye.  
> . . .  
> On and on, like we're living on a broken record.  
> Hope is strong, but misery's a little quicker.  
> Sit, and we wait, and we drown there,  
> Thinking, 'Why bother playing when it's unfair?'  
> They say life's a waste, I say they lack belief.  
> They tell me luck will travel, I tell 'em that's why I've got feet.  
> Left, right, left, right,  
> Moving along to the pulse of a heartbeat.  
> This could be the last chance you have to fly.  
> Do you like the ground? Want it to pass you by?  
> Man, you had it all when you were just a kid.  
> Do you even remember who you were back then?  
> What do you want in life? Will you be twice as strong?  
> What would you sacrifice? What are you waiting on?  
> Don't stop, march on."
> 
> I'm still finding DS9 fics deliciously difficult to write, and this, like its predecessor, kicked my butt, mostly because I'm rusty on my source material and my copy of _ASIT_ is at present with the same co-worker as before. All the same, thoughts/comments/reviews'n'critiques are all welcome.  <3

_Garak is a study in contrasts—complementary and contentious by turn—but it's for the liminal places in-between that Julian finds himself here._

_If it were merely a matter of medicine, of sterile heat and darkness to counteract drunken panic and sketchy vitals and flesh too cold and lights too bright . . . there are heated blankets in the infirmary. The lights can be dimmed, and there are hyposprays to soothe a headache and_ _troubled stomach in the morning._

_If it were merely a matter of medicine, and Julian were playing the part of genial Dr. Bashir, this would all be a given, and he'd be comfortably tucked away in his own bed again, sleeping peacefully, an early-hours visit to his patient planned._

_But it's not._

_And he knew it, has known it, still doesn't know just what to think about it anymore._

_The war has changed them, all . . ._

_Julian pushes the existential questions as far from mind as possible, lulled by the thick heat of Garak's quarters, latching onto the relief that the Cardassian is no longer quivering and cool-scaled with a psychosomatic chill. But it wasn't the artificial heat which helped—_

_Strong, agile fingers trace the doctor's shoulders, the fragile skin and flesh of the valley beneath the shadow of his clavicle. Julian feels Garak shift, aware again of contradictions: the echoes of the ridges across the Cardassian's own broad shoulders, sensed if not felt; the smooth-scaled body, grown soft to the touch over the years . . . Garak might often lament the fact that he is no more a trim young male but that deceptive softness to Julian has always been alluring._

_Deceptive it is: he's seen, too, the strength still in those limbs, the forms of Cardassian hand-to-hand combat the tailor can yet call readily upon—_

_And the hands, the hands which now in some child-like self-soothing gesture chastely knead at the doctor's shoulders, stroking them—what those hands have wrought—_

_When a shudder passes through Julian's lank frame, the hands grow still a moment, as if in reflection, then drop with Garak's usual forthrightness to catch the doctor's own. Briefly the latter remembers—_

_Forgiveness—_

_He had given Garak his forgiveness, for crimes unaccounted for, untold, for all the lies and truths alike—unadulterated, pure forgiveness—_

_Had he not?_

_Or has this war, the hideous-sharp truth of it, and the deaths of friends, Dukat's madness, and the darkness cast over them all made a liar of_ him _, too?_

 _The thought twists Julian's gut; his fingers reflexively clench, and he turns, restive now, understanding suddenly how Garak could find even this oppressive, heated atmosphere too cold. Dark eyes meet cerulean, the both of them half-shadowed, and even the lingering whisper of_ kanar _hanging about the Cardassian's frame seems to matter little now—sweetly sharp and repugnant as it is._

_The smile slid across the tailor's face is one Julian's seen many a time. Tactful, hungry: the half-raw clay of a mask cracked during the firing. Others do not see this. And it's taken Julian himself almost seven years . . ._

_And the word whispered into his ear, a secret, a secret being the thread by which Garak seems to string him, always—a word whispered into his ear as seems, somehow, to have escaped the universal translator— The doctor trembles, not for cold, and dares not speak._

_A name._

* * *

"Julian?"

_. . . Garak?_

But not—

But no—

Julian blinks into the filtered darkness, the artificial wisps of light yet dull, as if to trip a sleeping mind into some semblance of at least a clouded dawn. Still half-dreaming he turns, aware of the sudden emptiness of his hands, the air much cooler against his skin, the ache of—absence—

She's little more than a silhouette but he doesn't need to see the Trill clearly to know the look she wears. The pain in her voice is poorly masked. The confusion . . .

". . . Ezri."

And he knows then that the first name he spoke wasn't hers at all.

Ezri's faint smile catches. The center of the bed between them feels like some chasm which neither of them has hope to traverse . . . But for what? They fell into each other's arms because both were desperate for someone to cling to, someone stalwart, steadfast, _good_ ; someone who proved a promised beacon to see them through the war—

To see them through 'til death, or—

This.

The station seems to hang in limbo now. It carries haunted echoes, harried ghosts, even if the ghosts themselves still live on other worlds . . .

Sisko is gone.

And—

"You were dreaming again," Ezri breaks into his thoughts—wearily, if not unkindly. But beneath the careful level of detachment, Julian totals up the nights—what, the tenth time this must be in nearly just as many days? "You were dreaming about him."

Julian rubs at his eyes, takes a moment to reorient himself. "Look, Ezri . . ."

He thinks of reaching for her hand, but between them is the chasm.

The war created a minute, visceral reality, a microcosmic thing, but now the macrocosm of their whole lives stretches before them, and by turn creates a reality far greater. Of the both of them, Ezri surely understands this best.

"I don't . . . blame you."

He glances up. "What?"

"Jadzia . . . knew you were crushing on her pretty hard . . ."

Heat flushes his cheeks, and he's glad for the half-cast-darkness now, grappling though he may be to join the relevance of this to— "That's not why—"

"Julian, I know. That's not where I was going." He feels Ezri shift, drawing her knees up to her chest, can see her picking at the sleeve of her nightshirt. "This isn't about Jadzia and Worf, or you and me." A calculated pause. "It seemed to Jadzia that how you felt about her . . . Well. She looked at Garak and saw the same thing . . . but . . . For you, Julian—he felt that way for _you_."

This is no new revelation, however sweetly given: Garak's letter and Julian's own writhing conscience (which is to say nothing of his subconscious mind) over the past few days have given him evidence aplenty. But the fact that he's refused to acknowledge it for so, so long—

He runs quickly through their years together, dares briefly to shed light into dark corners . . . a habit of his Ezri knows too well, because when she speaks again her voice has lost its flinty edge—a strain he hears so rarely—a strain that reminds him far too much of Jadzia for his taste.

"Julian . . . Tell me honestly . . . Did you know?" She's stopped plucking at her sleeves, takes to knotting at the bedsheets. "Is that why reading his letter has been so . . . difficult? Because you knew and didn't . . . didn't . . ."

"I didn't know what to feel." The words are short, forced along a slow exhale. There are many times he's bared his soul to Ezri, but . . . There are things which even her profession (and his own enhanced abilities) aren't sufficient to address. Garak being one of them. But if not with her, then—?

 _What can I say to_ him _?_

"Ezri . . . when I met him . . ."

"Sometimes"—again the flint-edged voice—again Ezri bearing on the wisdom of every lifetime shared between symbiont and host, not merely Jadzia—"sometimes, Julian, situations happen to us which we're not equipped to handle. And sometimes . . . people like that happen, too."

 _Isn't that the truth . . ._ It seems like something happened in another life—the day when he'd been sipping Tarkalean tea and suddenly found himself the object of a certain Cardassian's attention. Rumored spy or no, the interaction had been . . . well. It had felt charged in a way Julian wasn't prepared for—even now he can feel Garak's hands slip across his shoulders, his first foray into—well—if not outright seduction, something quite close to it indeed. "Never in my life had anyone treated me the way he did," he acquiesces slowly. The memory of his then running into Ops as if he'd discovered the biggest secret on the station was something, meanwhile, that he'd much rather forget.

"What? Because he was attracted to you?"

"Because he . . ." Julian gestures helplessly, a futile thing.

A small snort of laughter from the usually irrepressible Trill. "Julian, did you think it would be straightforward?"

"But it _was_! That's the part I can't understand. If I'd just stopped to _consider_ it a moment . . ."

"Oh." A soft sound, all bemused laughter forgotten now. "You . . . didn't realize it? After all those years? From what I understand, Cardassians are rather blunt in their approach to—"

"No, I—"

Julian tilts his head. "I knew what he was doing, but I . . . told myself it wasn't. I mean . . ." He glances over, knows Ezri is not a child, knows that despite her youth and inexperience (wasn't he like her, not so long ago?) she bears almost three hundred years' maturity on her slender shoulders. "I knew he was . . . interested in me."

"It wasn't that, Julian—not just." Ezri reaches out now, puts a hand on his shoulder, a gesture he doesn't know how to receive.

"I know. We were friends. We . . . gave each other . . . a kind of friendship that I don't think anyone else could have . . . and . . ." Julian rubs at his eyes again. "That's why I didn't see it, Ezri. That's why I didn't _let_ myself see it."

"Ah." A softer play on what had been an incredulous little strain of laughter, the "Oh" sharpened. "Of course. Intellectual attraction, for some, is necessary for sexual attraction. Not always—"

"I'm no ascetic, Ezri."

"No. But in this case, it developed that way, didn't it?"

The doctor tilts his head, has nothing to say, isn't sure he wants Ezri to speak of it.

But speak she does.

"Julian, I know your . . . I know you were something of a ladies' man, before you and I . . . but . . . I'm guessing that with Garak—you'd never felt that way about—about . . ."

"It's not just that he's a male," Julian whispers finally. "Though that's part of it. I've never been attracted to another . . . but . . . Ezri. Please."

"Just say it." A steadiness, a sorrow, the register of her voice evoking in him yet again the images of a child—someone far too young to be in her present situation, however unfair a judgment that might be. "Julian—"

They are still, the silence thick and awkward.

Finally the Trill speaks the truth for both of them: "Garak made you feel something that no one else has. Not Jadzia, not me, not . . . none of your lovers. He was—he is—special."

_Yes._

"And it scared the hell out of me," the doctor answers, holding his head in his hands for a few moments, wracked with grief—for in Ezri's words and all that they imply he remembers something Garak wrote—about why their friendship splintered, why they parted ways—and it had nothing, really, to do with the war, although the destruction of Cardassia, Garak's feelings of betraying his own people, all of that surely tore at the stitches with which they'd bound their wounds—

No, it was and is far more than that—

Because sometimes friendships and relationships ending is a matter of having learned everything you can from another person, when you've learned from them all there is they have to teach you about yourself.

And sometimes it's because, in them, there are things about yourself which you're too afraid to learn.

* * *

"Julian. He loved you."

Another night. Another dream, one Julian can't readily recall, except for the wondrous debate he and Garak were having—one riddled with sly, cinder-eyed glances from the tailor and God, again, those knowing smiles—as if he knew, he knew the game he played, and was determined yet for Julian to acknowledge him—

Ezri calls the lights to something like twilight, studies the doctor's embarrassed, flushed-cheeked face. She knows, and hopes she's done a good job of conveying, that the strain on their relationship—the apparent approaching end of their relationship—doesn't have anything to do with Garak. Or, at least, it didn't. Now it seems it has everything to do with it—

"Why else would he send that to you? Hm? You sent him a random little letter asking how he is—he's trying to pick up the pieces of a broken _planet_ , Julian, how do you think he is? His world's been all but destroyed— And that letter's what he writes you."

To point out, and savagely, that the Cardassians now have a taste of their own medicine is something far better dropped from Kira's tongue, and Julian can't believe how close he was to spitting it out. Nor can he think as such when he recalls the real agony in Garak's voice, when they parted ways—his grief, deep grief over the near-loss and sure decimation of the world, the people, he so loved—even in his exile, loved—

"Julian, I don't know what was in that letter, but I saw how long it was, how long you spent reading it, how . . . how it's changed you, somehow . . . So I can't imagine that he's told some of that to anyone but you. Think about that, Julian."

A shrug, a shoving aside of what the real point is. "Ezri, there are no more secrets for him to keep. What's the point? The Obsidian Order is no more. Tain's been dead for years. Garak's no longer in exile—"

"That's not _important_ , Julian."

The Trill grasps at his hands, fiercely, her pert face grown disconcertingly dark.

"Julian, I think he still loves you."

"This is _Garak_ we're talking about, Ezri. He's not going to pine after me like some besotted schoolkid."

"No. But sometimes . . ." She purses her lips, looks away; reflexively he almost reaches out to trace her spots but doesn't dare. The distance . . . "So sometimes people happen to us that we're not equipped to deal with, right? But sometimes those very people which scare the hell out of us are the people we really _need_."

* * *

Julian paces through the Promenade, PADD in hand, strolling through the stores and kiosks, letting his feet bear him somewhere indeterminate.

Until he finds himself standing before Garak's shop.

Or—what used to be.

Surprisingly, no one's rented out the vacant space, and somehow it seems fitting.

He's been trying to compose a reply for days, Ezri's words following him, whispering along his mind when there's nothing else to still his thoughts. God knows his quarters— _his_ quarters, now—are too damn quiet and empty as it is—although guiltily at that he's slightly glad of the fact that he'll wake no one with those damn wretched dreams . . .

The doctor sighs, glances at the PADD, thinks of his friend—dear friend—as he was writing that letter to which Julian can find no words to reply: Garak's mouth half-choked with dust, huddled in a shed behind Tain's house, building sculptures from the rubble which had become monuments and he, Garak, become in some ways the speaker for the dead.


End file.
